[Treehouse Friends]

[Amit] I'm here with Dave Wiskus. He's an iOS and Mac designer.

[Dave] Experience design and visual design not just Photoshop work and not just wireframes

but from start-to-finish product design.

[Amit] And how did you get started?

[Dave] With design, I've always had--they say the eye.

I've always had like--I pick things apart, I see things that probably would annoy other people,

and when I repeat them often do annoy other people.

And I met some people who were in the app-making business, and they seemed

like cool people, and it seemed like they really loved what they were doing,

and I felt like I should get on board with that.

[Amit] Before you started designing apps, what were you doing?

[Dave] I was doing sales and business development for a very, very, very

large corporation. >>[Amit] You weren't doing anything related to design?

[Dave] No. I've always been a creative sort of person.

I was a musician for years--still am a musician--but no, nothing specifically design related.

I drew a lot of pictures when I was a kid, but--

[Amit] Why design and why app design more specifically?

[Dave] I'm an Apple fan boy. I love my Mac.

I love my iPhone. When the iPhone came out--before the SDK became available--

there was all this talk of will there be an SDK and what will that look like?

And seeing the potential future for apps--the idea of apps--

things that you could do with your phone now that were never possible before--

it was really exciting. I wanted to be a part of that.

[Amit] You started designing for the iPhone or the Mac after the iPhone apps

actually came out in the app store?

[Dave] I didn't start working on Mac stuff until later.

It was the SDK came out and months later I met some people who were app makers,

and they put me in touch with my friend Brad Ellis--Apple design award winner--

worked for RogueSheep, worked for Square, and now he's off doing his own thing.

He took the time to teach me.

[Amit] Oh, wow. Okay. So, you had a mentor.

[Dave] I had a very, very strong, great mentor.

The guy took a lot of time and patience to walk me through some things

that you--with design, there's some things that you can understand intuitively,

but they need to be codified, they need to be--

you need to develop frameworks mentally to understand

how A leads to B and how you can make that happen more seamlessly.

And there's a lot of moving parts--it's not just about how something looks,

but rather how does it feel and how do you feel while you're using it?

[Amit] Can you walk us through a bit of that process of A through B?

[Dave] There's a book I have on my coffee table--

101 or 100 Things I Learned in Architecture School.

[Amit] One hundred things you learned in architecture school?

[Dave] I'm probably butchering that title, but it's a coffee table book,

and it's written by a guy--every page is another thing that he learned

in architecture school, and it's my favorite design book because it forces me--

reading it, these are all things that apply to what I do,

but at no point does he talk about software.

And the best example I can give to answer your question is--I forget the term for it,

but when you're creating a space and a person is walking from point A to point B--

like through a courtyard--if they're walking through the entryway towards the building--

or whatever it is--if they can always see the building the walk feels longer

than if you were to wind the pathway around a little bit.

And it's the idea that by showing and obscuring your target you create a more

interesting journey and people complain less.

By the time they get there they feel like they've had a pleasant walk through a garden

rather than trying to get to something.

[Amit] How would you take that into the mobile app world?

[Dave] That's always the trick.

Sometimes it isn't about a person wants this, you just give it to them.

Sometimes it's a clever animation, or it's the way you present the information

that matters more than how quickly you present the information because the trick is

to remember that you're creating an experience. >>[Amit] Right.

[Dave] This isn't a simple, stupid machine that the person is using to do math.

They're trying to solve a problem, and if you can emotionally connect to them

and why they have this problem to begin with and why they're trying to solve--

and how they're trying to solve this problem, you can make something that people

don't just use as a tool but something they enjoy using.

[Amit] It's interesting that you say emotionally connect because that's always

never talked about when you talk about design.

You yourself said that design does not happen in Photoshop. >>[Dave] Right.

[Amit] So, where does design really happen?

Is it happening when you're imagining the app?

What is the starting point?

If I'm to design an app--I kind of know the app that I want to create,

but how do I start designing that app?

Where's the starting point for that?

[Dave] The starting point-- >>[Amit] If it doesn't happen in Photoshop, where does it happen?

[Dave] It happens everywhere. It starts with the idea and you have to--

you have to take the idea and turn it into something.

And the first step for me is to write down everything that I think the app should do.

I have field notes--a little booklet--I grab my pen, and I start writing down the problem

that I'm trying to solve because the better I understand the problem

the better I can create a solution.

And in doing so, I'll see things that I didn't see when I was just imagining

that it would be cool to have an app that did this.

Somewhere in that process, you get to a comfortable place and you have something

that--okay, it's ready to move to the next stage.

The next stage for me is I have a white board,

and on this white board I'll draw pictures of what the app--

not will look like but how things might be laid out, and the idea there is to make sure

that every piece of functionality--every button, everything that could happen that takes you

from point A to point--is written down.

I'll draw lines--okay, this takes you here.

And seeing something a little bit more visually--seeing a button in the corner--

maybe you decide, well, I kind of hate having a button there.

Maybe it would be better if there were some other way--

maybe there's a gesture I could use to get the same functionality--

and then you get to a certain point where you want to see the app--

you want to start looking at something that looks like a piece of software,

so I'll go into Photoshop and decorate it up and get everything laid out

and get my documents prepared.

And the mistake is to think that once the Photoshopping is done and you hand it off

to developers then the design is done, and the truth is that once you hand it off

you're really just starting the design process.

Once it's handed off to developers, then you're creating, then you're making software.

Everything up until that is drawing pictures.

Then you're making software and-- >>[Amit] You're making it come to life.

[Dave] Right. Making software to me is the exciting part.

The Photoshop stuff--whatever. I mean it's cool. I love it. It's fun.

But the real meat of it is making software--making something that people can touch,

and I give the developers things that they turn into real software,

and then I get to touch it and play with it, and then I'm like--

oh, and what if we did this?

And then I start getting all these ideas because I'm touching it.

It's a visceral experience. From there-- >>[Amit] Does that piss off the designers?

I mean the developers that--hey, you know--like your job's done.

[Dave] No, no. I've been fortunate enough to work with developers who have

an innate understanding of why design matters.

And they embrace that, so when they see me saying things like the animation is just

one-tenth of a second off--let me go in and fix it--or can we go in and fix it?

They say yes. >>[Amit] How do you communicate animation to a developer?

Because that's not their Photoshop, right?

[Dave] A whole lot of hand waving.

I want you to do this and you pull the thing down--it should go like this. It should bounce.

When it falls it should bounce like twice.

[Amit] You're almost like a director, not even just a designer.

[Dave] Very much so. I think of it very much like being a film director, yes.

And an animator, and there's all sorts of things that go into this,

but yeah, director is probably the best one because it's taking the people who are involved

in the creation of a thing, making sure they're all pointed in the same direction.

We all have the same goal, right? We all want to make something great.

We all want to make something that people enjoy using that solves their problem.

Nobody wants to make a crappy piece of software.

[Amit] I hope not.

[Dave] I'm sure somebody out there wants to, but most people don't want to

make a crappy piece of software, and the best thing to do is make sure that

everybody is still focused on that.

[Amit] And how do you guarantee that? >>[Dave] You can't guarantee it.

You can't fix other people, but you can surround yourself with people who are

good at what they do and really care about what they do,

and things tend to work out pretty well.

[Amit] I guess you do your wireframing on the white board, right? >>[Dave] Always.

[Amit] It is wireframing, and your wireframing I guess never happens electronically.

[Dave] No. For me, wireframing isn't a digital process.

Depending on the client or what other people need to see,

I will take pictures of things, or I will redraw it in OmniGraffle or something

so they have a picture to look at, and I can point at things, and we can talk through the

functionality, but that's not where I create.

[Amit] Don't you want to share that wireframe with other people if it's not digital?

You said you take pictures of it to share it.

[Dave] Or I'll redraw it, and I guess what I--it can be converted to digital,

but that's not where I create the wireframes--at least for me, I need a white board

because I need to pace around and do weird things with my hands and

think through things--and do a lot of staring at the ceiling, thinking--

and if I'm in front of my computer then I can't pace around.

I can't feel the room the way that I can if I'm in front of my white board.

You get that like a beautiful mind thing where you need to feel like you're a crazy genius,

and there's some truth to that sense of motion and momentum--inertia--

like the movement of it helps to keep me focused and motivated.

[Amit] What about prototyping tools, because there are a lot of these tools that are coming

out--they're saying you can have these interactive prototypes where you can take the

Photoshop and make it more visceral without having a developer code it.

[Dave] If you don't have a developer, then yeah, absolutely--that's a great way to go.

Anytime you can see something in the context of what it's going to be--

so don't look at a Photoshop document and think of it as software because

you're never going to think of that as software. >>[Amit] Right.

[Dave] You're not going to think of it as software until you're using it because

what it looks like is only part of the bigger picture.

The sooner you can be touching something and seeing how it works and how people

will connect with it, the better off the end product will be.

So yeah, by all means--if you don't have a developer to begin the development process

earlier in the design process, find a way to prototype it--even if it is just as simple as

having a bunch of comps set up in--saved to a photos app

where you can just swipe through them. >>[Amit] Oh. Okay.

[Dave] Your fingers on glass is the important part.

The goal--it's always going to be fingers on glass. >>[Amit] Right.

[Dave] Pictures under glass.

When you're touching it, your hope is that the user forgets that they're touching glass.

When you use the calculator app, you're not thinking about your fingers touching glass.

You're thinking about touching the buttons on a calculator.

It becomes the object rather than just projecting something.

And you want to create that illusion. It's all magic at the end of the day.

It's all slight of hand. >>[Amit] It is giving that feel of hardware in a software form.

[Dave] Right. That's why skeumorphism is so popular right now.

[Amit] That was going to be one of my next questions, actually.

What do you think about it? Skeumorphism is basically what?

Can you first just define that?

[Dave] Presenting something digital as if it were something real

is the way I would define it. >>[Amit] Like the calendar app.

[Dave] The calendar app with its little torn edges of paper up at the top,

iBooks where you're flipping pages--that's a skeumorphic design.

Anything that emulates the real life equivalent would be considered skeumorphic.

[Amit] Or even the calculator app.

[Dave] Calculator--yeah, because it looks like a calculator.

It has a real life feel.

I think it's fine. I think it gets a bad rap because some designers have taken it too far,

and they've done a really terrible job at making things feel the way they look.

A good example of this is the address book where you can't turn the--

maybe you can now, but you couldn't turn the pages.

It looked like a book with pages, but if you went to swipe, it tried to delete the information.

[Amit] Right. It still does that. >>[Dave] Swipe to edit.

Which is insane. You made it look like a book.

Why a skeumorphic visual design but but not skeumorphic interaction?

I think that that's the disconnect.

Find My Friends--that weird leather texture-- >>[Amit] I hate that.

[Dave] Everybody hates that.

But if you think about it from Apple's perspective,

if you're going to create something like that, you don't want it to look like

a creepy stalker tool, and you don't want it to look like a nerdy radar tool.

You want it to look like something that real people would use.

[Amit] There are a lot of designers that say it's a cop out.

[Dave] Skeumorphism? >>[Amit] Yes.

[Dave] I think it's a bridge. We live in a physical world.

It's becoming a digital world, but it's still a physical world.

People understand how a calculator works.

When you pick up a calculator you know that those are buttons and you can

press them, and your fingers would touch those.

My mother knows when she looks at a desktop calendar how that works.

Maybe the best way to present this information is in a way that people already understand.

We have to--as young technology people, we have to get over this idea that

everybody understands things the way that we do, because they don't. >>[Amit] They don't.

[Dave] For most people, the idea of technology or a computer is still kind of scary.

And to offer them a hand--an olive branch--to say things are going to be okay.

It's all going to work out. We are thinking about you.

That can go a long way to making people comfortable with the move to technology.

In my talk, I went over the floppy disk as save because it was a picture of the thing

that you're saving to. With the phone app there's a drawing--there's an outline of a phone.

It looks nothing like a modern phone, but we can recognize it as that was the

physical thing, now it's a digital thing.

The music app used to be called iPod, and there's a picture of an iPod.

The physical thing became software. Now it's no longer a picture of the iPod.

It's all showing us something that we understand and guiding us to the thing

that we don't yet understand so that we can. We can get there.

We just won't today. >>[Amit] Right.

And the new generation will probably never get those references, right?

[Dave] No. And that's okay because-- >>[Amit] They didn't grow up with those things.

[Dave] They're going to grow up using iPhones and using iPads and whatever else,

and it's just going to make sense to them in the same way that I'm sure you and I

grew up playing video games or watching TV.

My grandparents did neither of those things.

[Amit] What tips and tricks would you offer to someone that's starting out

designing iPhone apps? Or iPad apps, for that matter.

[Dave] Love what you do.

Whatever it is you're getting into this for, it should primarily be that you just love--

if it's iOS design--love the phone. Love Apple.

Don't love them blindly but love what they're doing.

Love that vision. Love that sensibility about how you connect with people with technology.

Love the apps that you use on your phone.

Love the way you use your phone.

And then love it so much that you can't help but want to create something for it

and be a part of that.

More practically speaking, the best piece of advice I can give is get out there and

meet people. >>[Amit] Meet people? >>[Dave] Meet people.

Go to conferences. Go to meet ups. Go to designer meet ups.

Go to developer meet ups.

Even if you're not a developer, go meet developers because those guys will

have all sorts of stuff that needs to be designed, and you can probably find some work there.

[Amit] Do you recommend just doing design work for free in the beginning?

[Dave] I would recommend--free is the wrong word.

It's a bad word. I don't like anybody working for free.

But when you're learning--when you're just starting out,

you don't want to work for free but there's a different kind of payment--

and that can be experience--where if you're a brand new designer and you've never

done this sort of thing before, if you partner up with a developer who's also fairly new

you can learn together. You're not creating something for them to go and use.

It's about learning and creating together.

Look for mentors. Look for people to--I had a mentor, and it served me tremendously.

[Amit] We wish we all had mentors like that.

[Dave] Find people who--it's not that hard.

If you go out, this community is really good about being open and embracing new people.

Because we're all kind of new people. There are no 30-year veterans of the iOS industry.

[Amit] It's not that old. >>[Dave] Right. Exactly.

There are no old school, I-remember-back-in-the-day people because there was no

back in the day.

This is still young enough that you can go and you can be the first big whatever.

There's still plenty of firsts to be had.

Or at least seconds. >>[Amit] Well, that's a beautiful note to end on.

Thanks a lot for doing this interview.

[Dave] Thank you.

[Treehouse Friends]